Should presidential candidates be required to hold higher elected office?

Following the lead of the current president, numerous candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination have never held higher elected office. Mayors Pete Buttigieg, Julián Castro and Bill de Blasio have lead cities, but never held national office. Andrew Yang has started companies and worked as a lawyer, but this is his first political race. Some argue these candidates would bring fresh experience and new viewpoints to the office of the president. Others say the president should have national elected experience. What do you think?

CityLab argues that changing demographics and national needs are making it much more likely that a mayor, or a candidate with similar local experience, could ascend to the presidency.

Many mayors now have a track record of success: Most cities are vastly better than they were twenty years ago. They are safer, better governed, and in better fiscal shape
...The demographic line that used to divide city and suburb is blurring. Cities are becoming more white and many suburbs have diversified. They are looking more ethnically alike, and they now both face similar challenges of poverty, crime, transportation, and housing. As titular heads of their metro regions, mayors are ideally positioned to capture the metro vote and speak to these national issues.

Cities especially are becoming a microcosm of the nation as a whole. Mayors must represent a far more diverse constituency than a senator from a gerrymandered district. Per Politico:

“Cities are powerful forces now; they’re almost like city-states,” said Henry Cisneros, who was mayor of San Antonio when, in 1984, he was interviewed to be Walter Mondale’s presidential running mate. “While it is perfectly plausible that a governor, even of a small state, can run for president … why isn’t it plausible that a mayor of a major, global epicenter of power like New York or Los Angeles or Chicago or Seattle or Miami shouldn’t be plausible at the presidential level?”

The Atlantic explains, even among higher offices, there is a hierarchy of who the American public sees as most fit for the presidency. While senators and governors frequently ascend to the presidency, members of the House of Representatives have a much harder time.

For all the worthy experience that a career in the House affords, no one has been elected directly from that body to the presidency or vice presidency since 1880 and 1932, respectively. But if House service doesn’t qualify you for the presidency, it doesn’t seem to count against you, either. Lyndon Johnson’s long tenure in the House didn’t knock him out of contention. And George H. W. Bush, who was exceptional in having never been a governor or a senator, made it from the House to the vice presidency in 14 years, after an intervening career as United Nations ambassador, envoy to China, and CIA director. As for mayors, state legislators, and other political leaders, the story is simple: Able though they may be, they might as well forget it. Even New York City Mayors John Lindsay and Rudy Giuliani, whose national profiles rivaled those of any governor, couldn’t make the jump.

According to Slate, governors are in the best position to argue their experience is analogous to what they would do as president.

Running even a small state government resembles being president more than holding hearings and issuing press releases or even passing the occasional resolution. And that’s about all that a Senator can do, ever since Congress more or less ceded dictatorial power in foreign policy to the president.

However, according to Vox, the current president has the least political and military experience of any president before.

In the office’s storied 227-year existence — from George Washington to Barack Obama — there has never been a president who has entirely lacked both political and military service. Donald Trump has broken this barrier.

2020 could be the year the United States finally elects a former mayor to the presidency.

Andrew Yang is following a somewhat similar mold—working for years in the business, tech and nonprofit sectors before deciding to seek the office of the president. Time explains his extensive non-political experience.

His career got off to a tough start: He spent mere months working as a corporate lawyer at Davis Polk and Wardwell in New York before, he says, he quickly became bored with it. Next he launched a failed Internet company called Stargiving, which raised money for charity by auctioning off celebrity experiences. He worked for a mobile software company called Crisp Wireless as vice president of their business and legal department and at a health-care start-up called MMF Systems. Then he ran a tutoring company that was acquired by test-prep giant Kaplan in 2009 for an undisclosed amount. (On the trail, Yang refers to it as a “modest fortune.”)
In 2011, Yang founded an organization called Venture for America. His vision was to train entrepreneurs and dispatch them around the country to help create job growth. He was later named one of the Obama White House’s Champions of Change for that work. Along the way, Yang married and had two kids, including an autistic son.

However many people, Yang included, believe his experience has more than prepared him to lead the country. Per Politico:

Yang has sought to position himself as the clear-thinking candidate willing to tackle the age’s biggest problems. He can talk at great length about universal basic income, but his website lists more than a hundred other detailed policy proposals, from reviving Congress’ Office of Technology Assessment to a rural-urban American “exchange program.” When he is talking with someone about how to solve a problem, he frequently mimics twisting a dial on imaginary machinery. He comes across as a problem solver...

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